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Baltimore Sun - United States
27 June 2009

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Baltimore Police Department, M

Police bias report's long fuse

Donald Reid didn't join the Baltimore Police Department in 1973 to make a political or social statement in the lingering aftermath of the race riots of 1968. The young African-American cop simply wanted to "fight crime and save lives."

And so at the age of 23, he didn't hesitate when his sergeant handed him a "blue card" - which was used to record information on stops of blacks who dared venture up Park Heights Avenue above Northern Parkway, the traditional dividing line between black and white in Northwest Baltimore.

"I thought it was normal," Reid told me. "I just did what I was told to do."

One day in 1975, a young boy approached Reid, crying that he had been "blue carded" twice by two officers within a single block while walking to a store. For the first time, Reid questioned superiors "about what was really going on with these cards" and was promptly handed an unsatisfactory performance evaluation and labeled a "dissenter."

He refused to sign and finally got a new review, and a transfer. It was then, he told me, that he noticed white cops who got into trouble were punished less severely than blacks. In 1984, he set out to prove his theory.

Reid had no idea that his research, which he completed in 1995 and made public a year later, would become the catalyst for a long-running dispute over race and discipline. It would consume the police administrations of three mayors and six police commissioners and prompt years of renewed racial strife within the police force.

Last week, city lawyers settled a five-year-old civil lawsuit filed by a black police sergeant and joined by more than a dozen of his colleagues who argued that they were unfairly fired or punished in comparison to their white colleagues.

It was Reid's long-forgotten report that first raised the issue and provided the statistics and background that propelled the tangled legal proceedings that cost city taxpayers $2.5 million in settlement costs, $2 million for a monitor and more than $1.3 million in legal fees.

Reid, who retired in 1996, told me his simple report "took on a new life. �It wasn't meant to be political. It was meant to resolve some issues. I was hoping that people would read it and make changes. We were coming out of an era of the '50s and '60s and '70s and you thought, 'OK, some of the old habits are still here.'

"Everyone agreed there were problems, and I expected immediate change," Reid said. "Apparently these problems still exist in 2009. These same problems were brought to their attention in 1996."

Reid delivered his report in 1996 to the white police commissioner, Thomas C. Frazier, and to the black mayor, Kurt L. Schmoke. The police chief ignored it, and the mayor quietly referred it for further study to a city agency that investigated charges of racism.

But Reid also distributed his findings to politicians, including a young and then-unknown white, brash city councilman named Martin O'Malley. He quickly grasped the report's implications and volatility. He held hearings that thrust Reid onto TV and into the newspapers, and helped secure the councilman's role as a reform-minded crusader who would eventually take over the mayor's chair (and later the governor's) on a law-and-order platform.

After O'Malley's public airing, Frazier suspended disciplinary hearings for 13 months and replaced the white police heads of hiring, training and Internal Affairs with black commanders. He developed a "matrix" system to ensure that officers who commit infractions were punished exactly the same.

But Frazier also elevated a white colonel to split the patrol bureau with the black colonel who held the post, essentially stripping him of half his command. Adding to the insult, the white colonel oversaw white district majors and the black colonel, Ronald L. Daniel, oversaw black district majors. "We created two departments, one white, one black," one police official told me at the time.

Daniel held a secret meeting of black officers in which he said Frazier should resign if he didn't fix the disciplinary process. Word leaked and Frazier accused Daniel of trying to "overthrow the government," prompting lawsuits, days of protests and opening years of racial division. Schmoke had to restore order to his fractured department but it was short-lived, and eventually Daniel was moved to a small office in City Hall. (O'Malley named him police commissioner when he took office, but fired him 39 days later.)

Discrimination lawsuits proliferated, forcing Daniel and Frazier into lengthy depositions in which the chief had to admit Reid was correct and Daniel labeled the chief a racist. In 1998, the federal government ruled the city police force had violated black officers' civil rights and had retaliated against those who spoke up. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ordered Frazier to rehire all black police officers he had fired for misconduct. He refused.

The issue eventually landed on Commissioner Edward T. Norris' desk, who worked for then-Mayor O'Malley. Norris agreed to hire back a handful of disgruntled officers, including Louis H. Hopson Jr., the lead plaintiff in the federal suit settled last week.

Now, a new police department, a new commissioner and a new mayor are trying to move forward, hoping these old grievances have been put to rest. But just recently, the police commissioner fired the in-house prosecutor, saying she had manipulated documents, which forced officials to drop charges against more than three-dozen officers accused of misconduct.

Among those cleared: two white officers charged with forcing a black homicide detective to view a racist Internet site.

"The problem still exists," Reid said. "That's the sad thing about it."

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Baltimore Sun - United States27 June 2009

Police bias report's long fuse

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Baltimore Sun - United States
27 June 2009